Italian Appeal Court Confirms Jail Terms for Milan Prosecutors Over Withheld Evidence in Eni and Shell’s OPL 245 Corruption Trial
An Italian Appeal Court has upheld an eight-month prison sentence for two Milan prosecutors, Fabio De Pasquale and Sergio Spadaro, for failing to file documents that would have supported energy group, Eni’s position in an international corruption case.
Reuters reported that Judges in the northern city of Brescia upheld the verdict handed down last year, which ruled that prosecutors, De Pasquale and Spadaro, failed in their legal obligation to file documents that could have helped the defence.
Before the verdict, Spadaro read a lengthy statement to the court in which he said “there was no refusal, there was no omission,” and that the prosecutors had acted “according to conscience and law”.
Their two prosecutors’ lawyer, Massimo Dinoia, said they would appeal to the Court of Cassation, Italy’s top court.
The Milan court that acquitted the defendants in the Eni and Shell trial said the prosecutors had failed to file among the trial documents a video shot by a former external lawyer for Eni, which the court said was relevant to the case.
De Pasquale and Spadaro were in October last year sentenced to eight months in prison for hiding vital evidence in the trial of Shell and Eni over the OPL 245 affair
The case was another episode in the OPL 245 saga which the Italian prosecutors lost in the Court of Milan after failing to provide evidence of fraud in the sale of the oil block to Shell and Eni by Malabu Oil and Gas Limited, a Nigerian company, in 2011.
